No Responsibility Saturdays

I've recently been experimenting with "no responsibility saturdays". I've toyed with similar things before, but partly I hadn't reached a point where the trade-offs were useful to me, and partly I think I tried variants that didn't draw the line on what to exclude in the right place.

Specifically, my rule is, I can do anything I feel like, be it collapsing in front of the TV, playing games with Liv, getting on with a hobby project, going out to socialise or walk, exercise, or catching up on a behind todo list. But stuff I *need* to do, I'll set aside time some other time, so I don't have anything I *have* to do.

Mostly, it's a rule that says I can ignore the voice in my head saying, "oh, but you really need to do X, you shouldn't do other stuff until you've done that". Which, well, maybe I should ignore that most of the time, The Voice isn't very good at choosing the right things to worry about. But I've always found it really hard to let go, and this helps.

It hasn't made that much difference to what I've actually been doing, I've done some social things I knew I would enjoy, I've enjoyed time with R, I've done tidying, I've done books and tv. But I've felt a *lot* more relaxed about it.

I guess "not have to do anything" is what weekends are supposed to be, and I just got the message late. But I always struggled with that: even when I didn't actually do much, it always felt like I *should* be doing something, that if I had time I should make the most of it by doing something really fun, or I should deal with one of hundreds of things I should "get to one day", or if I'm not doing that I should start a new project of some sort, etc, etc. I always felt like I had to do *everything*, so I tended to do *nothing*.

I had to get over several hurdles to get to the point where I could try this. Likely I will get to the point where I don't *need* to do it. But in the meantime it's been surprisingly helpful, not just for that day, the uplifted spirits have carried over to more of the week too.

Labyrinth Roleplaying, Sessions 2, 3

What Went Well

Playing some DnD where building an effective character and achieving things effectively actually matters has been very nice. I don't want to play that style too much, it's a big investment of effort, but I was missing it.

The mechanics for navigating an expansive underground maze worked almost perfectly. It really feels like feeling your way through routes you partially know but might shift any time. And generating a big batch of layout and bringing it up as people stumble across it has been very satisfying.

The characters and players are really great. The inquisitive, acquisitive, goblin. The impulsive, swashbuckling cat-bard. The dour blood hunter. The rogue with a mysterious history. The players have generally been great even though I didn't know them well before.

I've had lots of lovely ideas which have gone into sessions.

Playing a not-too-long session every too weeks has gone reasonably.

What Didn't Live up to Expectations

As always, my skills cat-herding players to turn up, and making sure everyone's clear on what's going on, have been a bit rusty.

The sessions have all been quite slow, partly because I've been getting used to the sort of prep that works well in this kind of campaign, and partly just because there's a lot of players, and everyone is still getting used to what their characters can do.

All the sessions left me feeling a bit like they were missing something but I wasn't sure what. That's not unexpected when I try to run a sort of game I haven't run before, but after some thought I think I got some idea.

One problem is, a dnd game is typically a stream of small decisions: explore the hut or the cave? talk or fight? search casually or thoroughly? Often not even decisions spelled out, but formed implicitly from what the players naturally do. In this game, my hope is that the choice of routes through the labyrinth would often serve in this role, but because progress has been slower than I hoped, most of the navigation decisions haven't really had a lot of decision to make.

Also, because I started off planning broadly, a lot of the individual things the characters encounter in one session are less well fleshed through than they might otherwise be, if I'd spent prep time thinking through what they were most likely to meet specifically. I've been doing more of this, even though it's more prep, but only needed to "top up" the places they're most likely going next, and hopefully can be reused if I use the same setting in future.

And there just haven't been enough NPCs who've often brought games to life. The idea was, NPCs in the castle would interact with the PCs in advance, through rumours and quests offered, and slowly build up a relationship. But so far, every delve has taken multiple sessions, and it's taken two sessions to complete what I intended as the original starter goal, so no-one has had time to pursue "extra" leads. I need some more of this to happen in session so people engage with it more, even if that takes time.

Dnd games that I've run well have always had fights designed well enough to be somewhat interesting, but have been brought to life by the ideas and npcs, the richness of the immediate setting as I've spent lots of prep time dwelling on it, and the characters have interacted with NPCs and environments in unexpected ways that have worked out because I've fleshed out characters and places to explore even if I wasn't sure if they'd be able to or not. I always used to think of myself as really analytical and less creative, so it's an adjustment to realise that's something that I can count as a success, and should expect to build up and rely on. But Liv's face when I talked about adding more NPCs made me realise it was well worth it.

Looking forward to

If possible, bringing more of the lore I worked out to the fore, it's been surprisingly hard to make it relevant, but it's come up a few times so I hope that works out.

Running a second group in the same setting, and seeing how they interact with the same spaces. And using the weirdness of the labyrinth to justify it if it seems like sometimes they leave somewhere in an impossible chronological order because of the order of the sessions :)